Tuesday, November 29, 2011

I’ve found that while for the most part, the Georgian
language is something completely different from anything I’ve ever studied
before, there are a lot of random cognates with English, and even more so, with
Spanish. Here is a list of the words I’ve learned so far (Romanized) that are
cognates with other languages that I know.

GeorgianSpanishEnglish

BibliotekaBiblioteca
Library

ModaModaFashion

IstoriaHistoriaHistory

MatematikasMatematicasMathematics

KimikaQuimicaChemistry

FabrikaFabricaFactory

InglisuriInglesEnglish

GhvinoVinoWine

ComputoriComputadoraComputer

ChaiTéTea(ok, this is not a cognate, but we call
Indian tea “chai”

In
English.)

TortiTortaCake

TelevisoriTelevisorTelevision

BiologiaBiologíaBiology

Aut’obusiAutobúsBus

KlasiClaseClass

SkolaEscuelaSchool

Kaphecafécafé

BariBarBar

PolitsiaPoliciaPolice

T’ualet’iInodoroToilet

ParkiParquePark

MuzeumiMuseoMuseum

Rest’oraniRestauranteRestaurant

OphisiOficinaOffice

BankiBancoBank

EséstaThis

Kat’aGatoCat

Mobilurimovilmobile/cell
phone

Kontsert’IconcertoConcert

KonphrentsiaConferenciaConference

EqskursiaExurción
Excursion

Piknikipicnic
picnic

T’aqsiTaxiTaxi

EnaLenguaLanguage/Tongue

And of course, every language has its false cognates; here
are some that I especially like

Deda- Mother

Mama- Father

Bitchi- boy

Chika- cup

Kino- cinema (this comes from Russian I think)

I wish I could say that all these cognates help me speak
Georgian, but unfortunately Georgian verbs are like some kind of alien language
to me, long strings of consonants that don’t belong together and which are
conjugated in a manner that still mystifies me despite having been explained
several times now. To give you some idea of what I’m up against, I’ll conjugate
the verb “to like” in the present tense for you.

Momts’onsMogvts’ons

Mogts’onsMogts’ont

Mots’onsMots’ont

Anyway, I’ll continue to study, though now I
have only a little more than 1 months left of my stay, so I don’t know how much I can improve in one month.

Monday, November 28, 2011

The first week I spent in my city it felt like summer, but
just a week later the weather changed and it started to feel chillier and
chillier and since the beginning of November it’s been downright cold all the
time.

No, wait, I take that back. I lived in Vermont for 5 years.
I know what the cold is. 0˚F for weeks on end, snow storms where you loose your
car in a parking lot and never a snow day because Vermonters are well prepared
for dealing with ridiculous amounts of snow and are completely fearless in the
face snow and ice. Here we just had our first frost this week, and this city
still hasn’t seen snow yet this year (one of the only places in Georgia).

But, the one key difference between here and there is a
little something called heating. In America, even a cold house is still
probably tolerably warm if you put on a sweater and warm slippers. Here, well,
it’s normal for the temperature inside the house to be the same as outside the
house. I was a little worried back in October when I realized that our house
only had one tiny electric space heater. Then once November came around, my
family dragged in a wood stove that hooks up to a pipe in the wall. Of course,
wood stoves can only be lit when someone is home/awake to feed the fire. And
while I know many Americans use wood stoves to heat their houses (and I’m not
sure how the system works), wood stoves here are only capable of heating the
room in which they are located. And even then, while they certainly take the
chill out of a room, you’ll never really feel warm unless you are sitting
within a one meter radius of the stove.

Another problem with keeping houses warm is the fact that
houses here are basically cinderblocks or cement covered with dry wall (if
you’re lucky). A little thing called insulation is conspicuously lacking,
causing any heat that is generated to be immediately sucked from the house.

I guess I’m lucky that that little electric space heater has
been now moved into my bedroom since the wood stove was set up, since my room
is the furthest from any source of heat, but because of either the cost of
electricity or the danger of leaving it running for hours on end (or more
likely, both) I can’t leave it on while I sleep, and obviously leaving it on
when I’m not home is out of the question. Which means that my room is
perpetually cold. If I don’t wear a sweatshirt to bed I will wake up in the
night from the cold. Sometimes on cold nights, I get into bed and wait for the
blankets to warm up… but they never do. And let’s not talk about getting out of
bed in the morning. I’ve now started a ritual that when my first alarm rings, I
get up, hit snooze and turn on the heater. Then hopefully after 30 minutes of
hitting the snooze button my room will be sufficiently warm that I can get out
of bed without completely freezing to death. Then I take my clothes, which all
feel like blocks of ice, and warm them in front of the heater for a few minutes
before putting them on.

Oh, and let’s not forget about school. It’s clear that
whenever the school was built, however many years ago, undoubtedly during
soviet times, there was some sort of central heating in the school. Cast iron
radiators can be seen here and there around the school, quite like my own home
in America. But, the days of central heating are long gone. As in most homes,
the school relies on wood stoves to heat the classrooms. But, of course, with
probably over 20 classrooms in the school, there are not enough wood stoves to
go around. Some classrooms are lucky to get a wood stove, most still go
without. We teachers are lucky because in our lunch room and in our teacher’s
room there are wood stoves, and so after every class we go and warm our numb
hands during the 10 minute breaks between classes. I have no idea how the
children are able to study in these conditions. When I am sitting and not
moving my whole body turns to ice and all I can think about is the cold. I am
always happy when I can get up and teach the class because it means I can move
around and get the blood flowing.

But, all this I can handle. Sure it means that I spend a lot
of time huddled around heaters and drinking tea in the morning just to hold a
hot mug in my hand for a few minutes since the wood stove has been out for the
past 8 hours and the house is the same temperature as outside. All this I knew
coming to Georgia. All this I have experienced before when I lived in Chile
during university. This is nothing. The part about this that irks me the most
is what is produced by all the wood stoves.

I used to love the smell of a wood stove when I lived in
America. That lovely smell of burning wood on a winter night. It was always
something pleasant for me. But here, when every house in the city is burning
their wood stoves to warm their houses, the air becomes thick with smoke.
Perhaps if they were only burning firewood it could be tolerable, but Georgians
use their wood stoves as another form of rubbish disposal. Every form of waste
in my house with the exception of glass bottles and food scraps are thrown into
the fire. Plastic bags, potato chip bags, candy wrappers, today I even saw a
plastic egg carton thrown in. For the first few weeks, the smell of burning
trash in the air was absolutely sickening to me. Just walking home through the
smoke filled streets was enough to make me slightly nauseous. But, as I write
this I realize that I haven’t felt that feeling in the past week or so. I guess
I’m getting used to the smell of burning plastic… which is probably not a good
thing because breathing in those toxic fumes can not be good for one’s health.

All I can say is, for those of you who are planning to come
to Georgia, be prepared for the cold of winter. Long underwear, thick sweaters,
fuzzy socks and slippers will all be put to good use in your daily life. Not to
mention a good winter jacket, scarves, hats, gloves, and (the one thing I
forgot) good boots.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Every week we plan on going to Mestia, a little town in the
heart of the Svaneti region deep in the Caucus Mountains. It is supposedly the
most beautiful place in all of Georgia (and by Georgian logic, that means the
most beautiful place in the world). I am fortunate enough to live in Samgrelo,
the region just next to Svaneti, but nevertheless, every time we plan a trip
up there, something happens and we are unable to go.

The first weekend we very nearly made it up there, but we stupidly
accepted an invitation to a wedding instead at the last minute. Then the next
weekend we were going to go but my friend was invited to meet up with some of
her friends in Kutaisi. Which, when we got there, it turns out they couldn’t
meet anyway, which is how we ended up in Batumi that weekend. We were going to
try again this past weekend, but it was raining here, snowing there and with
the perilous mountain roads that I have heard about, I was not willing to risk
it in bad weather (not to mention we would have been wet and miserable up there
anyway). This weekend I have planned to go to Armenia. Will we make it next
weekend? Who knows.

I’m realizing I don’t have many weekends left before I’m
done with Georgia. I’ll be finishing teaching after the 2nd or 3rd
week of December, planning a trip to Turkey for about 2 weeks, and then heading
back to America for a belated Christmas, then, if all goes to plan, back to
Korea two weeks later to start a new job, for which I am signing my contract
for this week.

I wish I had more time to do all the things I want to do
here. I still want to go to Mestia, Vardzia, Gori andto a ski resort. A friend of mine invited me to go with her
to Abkhazia, one of the Russian occupied regions of Georgia, because she has
some friends working up there with an NGO. Not to mention there are still a few
places in Tbilisi that I still need to see, like the sulfer baths, the huge
cathedral, the fortress, etc etc etc. And every day I’m hearing about more
beautiful places I must see before I leave. So much to do and so little time.
And of course, though it’s a small country, there are no highways, no high
speed trains and you must rely on marshutkas for transportation which are
unpredictable about time tables, prices, and just finding them. Just getting
anywhere in this country is half the battle and half the adventure, which means
lots of time wasted when you’re trying to get from point A to point B, and when
you only have 2 days a week to explore, it’s just not enough time to see everything
you want.

If you come to teach in Georgia, be sure to come with enough
time to see everything you want to see, so you don’t leave here disappointed.
The week long orientation in Tbilisi affords little time for actual exploration
of the city as you’re locked in the hotel from 9am-8pm most days. Then, once
you’re placed, if you’re lucky you’ll be somewhere central where you can
explore easily on the weekends. If you’re unlucky, you could be in a village
where marshutkas only come every few hours to take you to another small city
where marshutkas to where you want to go also come infrequently, and you could
spend a whole day just getting to your destination. My trip to Armenia this
weekend will be about 13 hours of travel. 6 hours to Tbilisi, then another 6
hours to Armenia. For me to get to Khaheti, it’s 6 hours to Tbilisi and 1.5
hours to Khaheti. And I’m in a major city! Just be sure to plan your trips
carefully!

Saturday, November 26, 2011

I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that I was lucky
because I have been placed in a house with a real shower with hot water.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that I am showering every day here in Georgia.
My goal is always to get a shower in once every two days, but usually I’m lucky
if I can get 3 showers a week, usually it’s closer to two.

To get into the shower I need to face a few battles. First,
the hot water must be turned on. Unfortunately, we don’t have on demand hot
water, but a hot water tank that must be heated up. Just turning it on doesn’t
mean I have hot water. I’m not sure how long you need to wait to get hot water,
but it’s usually more time than I have. I’ve waited up to an hour for the water
to warm up, but that is still not long enough.

Then, if there is hot water, the next problem I must face is
whether or not the shower head is working. For the past two weeks, every time I
have wanted to take a shower, there has been some problem with the shower so
that only a dribble of water actually makes it out of the shower head, the rest
drips down the cord. If my host father is at home, he can always fix it for me,
but if he is not home, which is often the case, then I must go without the
shower.

So, lastly, if I do have hot water, and I do have water
pressure to take a shower, I must consider the temperature. If the wood stove
is burning and the house is warm (and by warm I mean not cold) than taking a
shower might be reasonably comfortable. If the wood stove is not burning, that
means that the house is the same temperature as outside, and just to give you
an idea of what temperature that is, we had our first frost this week. Getting
undressed and into a shower when the air temperature is in the single digits
(Celsius) is not a fun time, even if the water is hot. There’s never enough
water pressure to cover my body, so one part of me is hot from the water, but
the rest of me is freezing. Therefore, morning showers have now become
impossible.

Now, me and my friends look forward to the weekends when we
can stay at a hostal with a good, hot shower and hopefully one that even has
central heating so we’re warm when we get out of the shower and warm when we
sleep. That doesn’t always happen, hostals and guesthouses are often the same as
our own homes, if not colder, but that is at least the goal. And I'm one of the lucky ones. Many folks I know live in villages and don't even have hot water (or an indoor bathroom) to speak of.

Friday, November 25, 2011

If you know anything about Georgia, you have probably heard
of the famous “supra”. A supra is basically a feast in honor of something or
someone. Sometimes a birthday, sometimes a wedding, sometimes to welcome a
guest or for a funeral, Georgians can’t pass up any opportunity to eat and
drink. Today in the teacher’s lunch room at school food started appearing on
the table. This is strange because no one actually eats meals at school,
usually all you can find to eat in the lunch room is cakes and cookies, teas
and coffees. As more and more food started appearing I got the feeling
something was up.

Khajapuri- cheese bread

Stuffed tomatos and eggplants

After 10 minutes, the table was completely covered with
food, and another table had been dragged in to pile more food and drink on it.
I was informed that all of it, down to the pastries had been homemade. Then,
right there in our free period we stopped for a supra, today, in honor of a
teacher’s father who passed away two years ago. What looks deceivingly like a
bottle of beer (because it is a beer bottle) on the table is actually full of
homemade Georgian wine, and of course everyone was given a glass to make a toast
to the teacher in honor of her father.

Tsatsivi- Turkey in walnut sauce

Vinagreti- cooked, cold veggies in mayonnaise

I find it amusing how common it is to drink at school here.
Yesterday after school one teacher pulled out a bottle of cognac and most of
the teachers did a shot or two of that. The gym teacher (the only male teacher
in the school) is always pulling wine out of some cabinet and passing around
glasses during break times and a few days ago he even had a bottle of Tbilisuri
(which I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I believe it is something like rum)
that he was trying to convince me to drink on my break period. Georgians never cease to amaze me.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

I came home on Sunday evening to find my family cooking up a
real Mgrelian dinner. Within Georgia, there are many groups of people with
their own traditions. I live in the region called Samgrelo and the local
dialect is called Mgrelian. While it’s a relative of the Georgian language, the
two are not mutually intelligible. Locals here speak Georgian in school and
work and about town, but speak Mgrelian at home and when spending time with
friends. The Samgrelo region also has certain foods that are particular to the
region and Sunday’s dinner featured one of the most famous of them, ghome, which is basically “grits” which are eaten in the
southern part of the US. It’s made with cornmeal, which has been boiled for a
long time until it becomes a gooey substance. Then it is usually eaten with
cheese or dipped in various sauces, whatever happens to be available on the
table.

I’ve had ghome before, at weddings and supras, but I’d never
seen how it was made. I came home just in time to see the process. It’s pretty
simple.

First you put some cornmeal in a pot with lots and lots of
water, then let it cook for a long time, stiring occasionally. Generally white
corn flour is used rather than yellow corn flour, but as you can see here,
yellow cornmeal is also good.

You can add more corn
meal if it’s not thick enough. It should be very gooey, not liquid at all. Kind
of like thick oatmeal.

Then serve on a small
plate. Preferably, with a piece of cheese or two thrown in while it’s still
piping hot so that the cheese melts into the ghome.

After it was served, they left the remaining ghome on the stove and it hardened and basically became tortilla chips!

In addition to this,
we had baked chicken, preserved “Mexican cucumber” (whatever that is… it’s not
an identifiable vegetable for me, but it certainly doesn’t look like a
cucumber), beans and, of course, bread.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Batumi is Georgia's one really touristy, developed city. Walking around
in the downtown area and coastal area of Batumi feels like walking
around Europe... not like the rest of Georgia, that's for sure. There's
not much to write, but I'll let the photos do the talking. We only spent
less than 24 hours here, which was plenty to see everything when it's
not beach weather. But, there are still some beautiful sights to check
out, it's worth the trip down here.

Friday, November 11, 2011

It all started with a sinus infection. I’ve had it for weeks
if not months but I finally couldn’t ignore it any more and decided to suck it
up and go to the doctor. I’d heard some horror stories about the doctors here in Georgia.
Doctors that don’t speak a word of English, bribing people to pass their
certification exams, and prescribing dangerous medicines for the wrong
illnesses. But, I figured this was just a sinus infection and couldn’t be that
hard to screw up.

For us TLG teachers to go to the doctor, we must first call
the health insurance hotline (whose operators speak amazing English by the way)
and get recommended to a clinic. They text messaged me the address of a clinic
in my city and told me that the doctor would wait for me to show up since I
would be a little late.

I arrived at 4 o’clock and was shuffled into a room where a
woman who didn’t speak a word of English took my blood pressure and pulse and
took all my information. I was getting worried that this woman was the doctor,
but then I was shuffled into the next room where I was met by the doctor and to
my relief, he spoke perfect English. I lucked out by getting a doctor that has
worked for various international organizations before. He was very
professional, more professional that I’ve seen in Korea, that’s for certain. He
listened to what I said were my symptoms and he agreed that it was probably a
sinus infection , but he’d have to do a blood test to check my white blood cell
count. After the nurse took my blood he told me, “I’m going out for a while,
wait here for the blood test results and I’ll be back.” I didn’t think it was
possible to run a blood test that quickly, but 30 minutes later he was back and
had the typed up results in his had. Slightly elevated levels of white blood
cells. He wrote me out a prescription and sent me on my merry way to the
pharmacy to get my antibiotics and nasal spray.

The nasal spray started to work immediately and I started
feeling much better by the next morning. I took my antibiotics with my breakfast
again and then again with my “lunch” (which is just cake since that’s all my
school serves in the food department) at 11. After school, I went to the
internet café to check some email and make some skype calls. I go to one
particular internet café because it tends to have the most working microphones.
But, the downside to this place is that the air inside is terrible. I can’t put
my finger on what makes the air so bad, sometimes it’s from people smoking, but
even when no one is smoking I tend to leave there after my time is up feeling a
little nauseous. But, usually with some fresh air I feel better. Even after my
15 minute walk home I still wasn’t feeling better. Perhaps it’s the fact that
stepping outside doesn’t mean getting fresh air anymore. Once evening time
comes around everyone starts lighting up their wood stoves and burning, not
only firewood, but anything and everything combustible from broken lacquered
furniture to plastic bags and everywhere in between. I used to love the smell
of a wood stove in America, but here the air reeks of burning trash. Not
helpful to my nausea.

I lied down for a while but still didn’t feel better. Then I
threw up. There wasn’t much in my stomach to throw up, considering all I’d had
in the past 8 hours was one cake, a persimmon and a cup of tea. Then I threw up
again. Then I threw up again, but there wasn’t anything left to throw up this
time and I just had the dry heaves. I felt for sure that some dinner would
help, maybe it was just my empty stomach making me sick. But no, 20 minutes
after my small dinner of one piece of bread and sauce, that came up too. And
again.

Then my family started to worry about me. They send the son
out to the store to buy me some Borjomi mineral water, which is the Georgian
version of ginger ale for an upset stomach. They thought for sure that would
work. I wasn’t so sure. Then all that Borjomi came back up too. And again. I
lied down on the couch under a blanket shivering and went to sleep. A while
later I got a phone call from the health insurance folks I had spoken to the
day before. My host mother had called the TLG representative and she had called
the health insurance. “Ms. Lynch, you have two options. First, we can call you
an ambulance and you can go to the hospital to be treated,” woah, woah, I’ve
only been throwing up for 4 hours, there’s no need to call an ambulance.
“Otherwise, you can wait until tomorrow and you can go to the doctor.”. I told
them that I would be fine, I would wait until tomorrow to go back to the doctor.

Then another phone call came. This time it was the TLG
representative again. I told her that I was fine… well, relatively speaking,
and I wasn’t going to die. Then I asked her to translate for my host mother
that I would go to the doctor in the morning and not to worry about me. Dispite
even getting a translation for “don’t worry” for my host mother, she clearly
was still worried. I fell asleep again and then I was woken up to my host aunt
telling me that my host mother’s brother, who happened to be a doctor was on
his way over with some “medicament”. She said, “He will come in 10 minutes.”
This was at 9 or 10 o’clock. At 1 AM I was woken up when he finally arrived,
with an IV pack in his hand ready to rehydrate me. I kind of had a feeling this
was going to happen. At this point, it’s too late to say no. Plus, I probably
did need it. How long would it take? 25 minutes. Ok. Now the only question was,
how safe is it to administer an IV in one’s home?

This was too priceless of a moment to let it go by without a photo...

They set up a table with a chair on top to hang the IV from
next to the sofa where I had been sleeping. He swabbed my arm down with vodka
to disinfect. The doctor found the vein without too much trouble, but then they
realized that whenever he leaned over to put the needle in, his shadow blocked
the light and he couldn’t see the vein. Eventually he got the needle in and
started the IV but after 5 minutes, he decided that this was a “tsudi vena” bad vein. Oh, did I mention he didn’t speak a word
of English?

He decided that he’d have to set up the IV in my hand rather
than my arm, but he needed a smaller needle. Half the folks in the house jumped
into the car and went with him to some hospital somewhere to get another
needle. They were back just 10 minutes later and before I knew it I had an IV
drip into my hand. This, however, did not stop the vomiting. My poor host
mother had to hold a bag for me while I threw up more since I couldn’t hold it
myself with my arm in the IV.

The other problem now was that it was getting close to 2 am
and now the IV was on a slow drip since hand veins are smaller than arm veins.
My poor host mother stayed up until after 3 am when the IV finished and took
out the needle (the doctor had long taken off by then). I stayed on the couch
to sleep because I couldn’t have possibly gotten to the toilet from my room in
the middle of the night in my condition (it’s not easy when I’m healthy now
that I think of it). They brought me another blanket and I slept fitfully the
rest of the night, but without throwing up again.

In the morning, I was able to eat a piece of “dry bread” and
a cup of tea. I finally got to the doctor around 2 pm. Everyone in my family
had been making theories about why I was sick. I attributed it to the
medication. My host mother and aunt believed I had eaten unripe fruit because
they saw that I had eaten an orange that was still green with my breakfast.
But, the orange tasted fine and I refuse to believe that an unripe orange at 8
am could give me dry heaves 15 hours later. When I explained to the doctor what
I had done the day before he immediately asked me why I had taken my antibiotic
so early at 11 am. That was my only break when I could eat I explained, but he
told me that I really should wait at least 6 hours, preferably 8 hours between
taking pills.

Anyway, I guess we’ll never know the real reason why I got
so sick, but he decided that I needed another IV, which somehow turned into two
more IVs. I sat laying in that cold office getting my IVs playing games on my
cell phone for the two hours to pass the time. But, when I was finally
finished, I felt rejuvenated. I had had to take a taxi over to the clinic
because I just hadn’t had any strength to move, but now I felt like I could
walk home, heck, I felt like I could even go teach a class or go do something, anything. I left there with orders to start taking
my medicines (properly spaced this time) as soon as I was feeling better again.
And the next afternoon I was on a bus to Tbilisi to spend my weekend in
Kakheti. I just hope that if I follow the instructions this time I won’t have
any more problems!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

1.5 hours east of Tbilisi lies the little town of Signaghi.
Located in the heart of Georgia’s wine country, the region of Kakheti, stepping
into this village is like stepping out of Georgia and into some town straight
out of a fairy tale. The main streets of town are cobble-stoned and all the
buildings have been meticulously repaired, at least on the outside, and one
really gets the feeling that you’re somewhere in Europe. No, Signaghi is not
the “real Georgia”, but I get the real Georgia every day here, my weekend here
was an escape to another world.

We took the 9 am marshutka from Samgori station in Tbilisi,
the capital of Georgia for 6 lari (about $4 USD). We had found the name of a
well recommended guesthouse before arriving, but when we got off the marshutka
at 11:30, we were met by an old woman shouting “guesthouse!” “guesthouse! 15
Lari!” (about $10 USD) so we decided to follow her to her house on the main
street a few minutes away. With no heat in the room and the bathroom outside,
it was clear why it was only 15 Lari a night. But, we were there and we didn’t
want to waste more time looking for another guesthouse so we paid our 15 lari
to stay the night. Before we went out, she took us into her wine cellar and let
us taste her homemade wine and homegrown grapes. She also told us (in Georgian,
of course because “guesthouse, 15 Lari” was the only English she knew) “Eating
in the restaurant is very expensive. Let me make you a good lunch.” We didn’t enquire the price, but we agreed. Turns out
she tried to charge us 10 lari each for a bowl of soup and a few khinkali
(Georgian dumplings). When I told her that that was too much, she said, “ok,
ok, you are teachers,” and she cut the price in half.

View from afar of St. George's Church

Then it was time to explore the town. We walked way down a
road and found a gate in the fortress wall and some fantastic views.

View of the Caucus Mountains in the distance

We walked back and checked out St. George’s Church. I
finally remembered to bring a scarf with me to cover my head as I enter the
church.

In front of St. George's Church

Then we walked the 2 km out of town to go to Bodbe
monastery. Unfortunately they wouldn’t allow photos inside because it had some
fantastic, old paintings on the walls and ceilings.

We hiked down to find the Holy Spring. They had a bath where
you could jump in the Holy Water as well, but that looked awfully cold.

Then we met a German guy who works for the UN here in
Georgia and he gave us a ride back to town in his massive UN vehicle. I found
it rather funny because he told us that he’s not allowed to ride the marshutka
because it is too dangerous, but we teachers are not allowed to drive because
it’s too dangerous. Personally I’d take the crazy marshutka drivers who are
used to driving ok Georgia’s crazy roads over driving myself through Georgia’s
crazy roads.

Dinner was a salad at a restaurant that had wi-fi so I could
finally call home for the first time in 2 weeks. The time difference between
here and home does not make calling home easy and it seems whenever I actually
find a good time to call home, my mother is working overtime and isn’t home to
answer the phone.

After this we were kind of at a loss for what to do. My
travel buddy doesn’t drink and the whole town basically closes up except for
the 2 or 3 bars around. We seem to have come a little late for the tourist
season as well, there was hardly a soul to be seen, especially tourists. We
wound up going back to our room and going to bed at 8 pm mostly out of boredom.

We woke up early and headed over to check out the last
tourist attractions left in the town, a part of the wall with an elevated path
for tourists to walk along, and St. Steven’s church. We killed the rest of our
time waiting for the 11 am marshutka at a new café near our guesthouse that is
operated by handicapped people. Finally we went and bought our tickets and got
on the marshutka back to Tbilisi. While it was a long ride from my city, 7.5
hours of driving time, it was well worth it. It is the most beautiful town I’ve
seen so far in Georgia.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

I was very upset after being brought to a Georgian hagwon
today. I was asked to come and chat with the students, which I had no problem
with. But I think what happened was that I was nearly recruited to volunteer at
this apparently for-profit school.

I was brought in to talk to the teachers of the school,
there was a Russian teacher who also spoke good English, two English teachers
and a Spanish teacher who I could only communicate with in Spanish. They were
all very nice, but kept asking me, what days can you come to our school and
help? Please come on Sundays when we have our kindergarten class! Sorry, I am
only here for a month and a half more and I would like to keep my weekends to
see your beautiful country. Well, what about another day? What day? What day? I
don’t know, I could come by on Tuesdays sometimes, maybe. Oh good, oh good, we
need you so much here! Please come watch this class now, they are very
advanced, today we are studying a passage from On Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. Please let us know what you think
of our wonderful students.

I’d never heard
of this book before but the title sounded intimidating, and my interest piqued
to see what kind of students would be reading such material. It turned out it
was a test prep class with five seniors practicing for their college entrance
exam and one 9th grader who’s English is too advanced to study in
any other class at the school.

The students had indeed read part of one chapter of this
book, On Human Bondage, which turns out
is a novel that was written in 1915, a book which is probably a similar reading
level with Jane Eyre. Certainly,
it would be considered high school level reading in America. Now, the teacher
asked the students to recite from memory this half a chapter of the book. The
first to go was the 9th grader. I was very impressed with this boy
because, while he didn’t memorize this whole passage word for world, he
replaced words he didn’t know with synonyms and words that made sense in
context, keeping the story coherent. The teacher seemed a little upset with him
that he didn’t have it memorized word for word, but didn’t get upset until she
asked him to remember obscure words from the text from the Georgian definition
and he missed a few words. She asked him “How can you understand the story if
you don’t study the vocabulary?” to which he responded in excellent English
“Teacher, I understand the context and I can figure out the meanings of the
words that way. I don’t need to take this exam for 3 more years.” The teacher
nodded and moved on to the remaining 5 students. Each of them recited the text
from memory and told the definitions of the words. But, it was clear that they did
not understand the text by the mistakes they made from their recitations. After
45 minutes of listening to kids regurgitate text they didn’t understand, the
teacher turned to me (and I was getting angrier and angrier by the minute
sitting there, doing nothing, watching these kids regurgitate meaningless words
while their parents were paying for them to learn something) and asked me “What
do you think? Do you have any suggestions?” To which I replied, “These students
memorize the text very well, but I wonder if they actually understand the
meaning. May I ask them some comprehension questions?” The teacher looked a bit
taken aback, but of course couldn’t say no. When I started to ask them
questions from the story, they looked a bit stunned, deer in headlight effect
(a look I’m getting used to in my own school). The only student who could
answer my questions was the 9th grade boy. After class, I tried to
explain the difference between reading and memorizing to the teacher. That
these students were working so hard to memorize the text that they weren’t
thinking about the actual meaning of the text. This 9th grade boy
(who admittedly is at a very high level because he had been in an exchange
program in England) actually read and understood the story, had formed opinions
on the text and actually understood the character’s actions where the other
students had just memorized the text without thinking about the actual meaning
of the text.

The class after that got no better. After I asked my
comprehension questions, the teacher moved on to another reading from an
English reading book where she read a text aloud, translated it for them, then
wrote no less than 35 new vocabulary words on the blackboard for them to copy
and study. Then, without having the students read the text for themselves, or
discussing the topic of environmental problems, she closed the book and then
moved on to a text, written in Georgian which they needed to translate into
English. This on it’s own, I don’t feel is a terrible exercise, translation is
a good brain exercise, but this is the way most public schools are run. Here is
English text, translate it to Georgian. Here is Georgian text, translate it to
English. The students are never actually asked to form a sentence on their own,
not in writing or spoken word. Kids here can’t even speak OR write a coherent
sentence and even the hagwon propagates this nonsence.

I tried to be understanding. It is a test prep course after
all. I asked the teacher, what do they need to do for the test? She pulled out
a sample test. There was no text memorization section. There was no Georgian to
English translation section. There was reading comprehension and an essay
section. Neither topic had been addressed in class. There was no reading
comprehension, only text memorization and there was absolutely no writing,
unless you consider copying vocabulary words from the blackboard writing.

I left there in a very bad mood. First, after seeing such a
poorly run class and then, add insult to injury, I was asked to volunteer my
time teaching at a place like this while they make money off of me. I don’t
really know what I’m supposed to do in a situation like this. Do I ask for
money? The amount I could be paid for one or two days a week would really be
negligible, at least outside of Georgia, considering I make $250 a month at my
full time job. How much could I make? $10 a day? Not really worth fighting over
and frankly I feel bad charging for my services since I’m supposed to be here
as a “volunteer” even if that isn’t completely true since I make the same
salary as a typical teacher here. I don’t know what it was really that made me
so angry, if it was the waste of money on the part of these kid’s parents who
probably don’t have a lot of money to spare anyway, or if it was the fact that
they expect me to volunteer my time while they make money, or if it was just
the fact that I wasted an entire afternoon of my life in such an infuriating
situation. Now I have to figure out how to stay away from this place in the
future since my co-teacher, I think, will beg me to come every day.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

I remember when I used to be obsessed with Anime in high
school and I’d have these discussions about bad dubs with my other Otaku
friends. We’d complain about how bad this voice actor or that voice actor was
and how it would be so much better if we could just watch shows with subtitles.

Now living in Georgia, I realize that no bad dub I saw back
then could ever compare with the terrible dubbing of Georgian TV. Nearly every
drama, cartoon and movie on TV comes from abroad. Most are American, but
Spanish and French language dramas also seem to be popular as well. Georgian TV
dubs all of these, but perhaps for budgetary reasons or other reasons, instead
of removing the original voices and getting voice actors to recreate the
dialogues, they merely lower the original voice soundtrack and speak over it.
The Georgian voices sound as if they are being read from a script without
seeing the actual program, as there is no emotion portrayed in any character’s
voice. Under the Georgian you can hear people speaking with interesting voices and with emotion, while over the original voices, Georgian is spoken in emotionless voices.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

I had a feeling the conversation would go something like
this, but I figured I had to give it a shot.

Me: “Is there a post office here in our city?”

Co-teacher: “Why yes! Of course we have a post office!”

Me: “Oh, really? That’s great. You know I wanted to send a
package to a friend in Korea. Do you think the postal system can handle that?”

Co-Teacher: “Oh, you mean you want to send something?”

Me: “Well… yea… “

Co-Teacher: “Oh… I don’t know if the post office is actually
open.” She turned confirmed with another teacher in Georgian, then turned to me
again and said, “yes, I think it was working 5 years ago, but I don’t think it
is working now.”

Me: “So… how do you get mail if there is no postal service?”

Co-Teacher: “Well, we can send things at banks. And we use
e-mail.”

Me: “So, if I want to send a package I can go to the bank?”

Co-Teacher: “Hm, I’m not sure, but you can send money
there.”

Me: “So, if your relative in America wanted to send you
something, could you receive it?”

Saturday, November 5, 2011

I was walking home through the village back to my city
yesterday with one of my co-teachers and I was asking her some questions about
the farm animals that roam about freely.

Me: “There are so many cows roaming around everywhere. How
do their owners find them?”

Co-Teacher: “Oh, they go home at night.”

Me: “How do they know how to go home at night?”

Co-Teacher: “Oh, well, Georgian cows are very smart.” (This
was a joke of course)

“You know, several years back, you could even see cows in
the city.”

Me: “You know, I live in the city and I see cows around my
house every day. They just walk around and eat anything they can find, grass,
bushes, they even eat the bushes that stick out through people’s fences.”

Co-Teacher: “Yes, that is why we have fences. To keep the
cows and pigs out.”

Me: “Not to keep people out?”

Co-Teacher: “No no, no one ever locks their gates here. But
if there were no fences, the cows would enter our yards and eat everything.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Smoking is everywhere in Georgia. We were informed at the
orientation that it would be impossible to expect to find a smoke-free host
family. Even if the family members themselves don’t smoke, they said, guests
would be sure to smoke in the house. And Georgian houses always have guests
coming in and out all day long. Not to mention that people smoke everywhere,
hotels, restaurants, bars, internet cafes, in the car, taxi etc etc. I’ve yet
to see someone smoking on a bus or marshutka, but I feel that it may just be a
matter of time.

I discovered no less in my own home in my first few days
after I arrived. Neighbors were always coming in and out of our house, often
with a their cigarette butt hanging from their mouth.

But then, after a week of being at my house, my host father
announced to me that he had been smoke free for 4 days. My host mother was very
proud of him and it seemed to have given her the confidence to make her whole
house smoke free.

The next day our neighbor walked into the house again with
his cigarette in his mouth and she gave him a lecture about how she didn’t want
people smoking in her house. At first he looked at her like she was crazy,
perhaps it was the first time someone had ever asked him to step out to have
his cigarette. But she persisted, dropping my name in there, perhaps saying
that I didn’t want to be sucking in his second hand smoke. She turned to me and
said something in Georgian that I understood to mean “Isn’t that right?” and of
course I responded “Kho!” (yes in Georgian). He just looked at us, shook his
head and stepped out until he had finished his cigarette. But from then on,
whenever he came over with his cigarette, all my host mother had to say was no
smoking and he now steps out of the house without complaint. It’s good to see
that people are becoming aware of the smoking culture and that they have the
power to make changes for the better.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

The lesson in our book today was to talk about the problems
in our school, how we would fix them, and (using ‘I think’ and ‘I believe’)
tell what we expect in the future. I have only been at the school for a total
of four days so I clearly have a lot to learn. The major problems listed by the
students were as follows, and more or less in the following order:

Lack of a gym

The library is too small

There is no laboratory to study science

Students don’t have access to the internet in the computer
lab

… and finally….

There are no lights

For some reason they didn’t seem to think that the fact that
the school has no running water or the fact that a class of 8 students often
shares 2-3 books were problems though.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

The school was abuzz today with news that one of our
students got married yesterday. The girl is only 14 and in the 10th
grade and has married a man in the village. I couldn’t figure out how old the
husband is, but as he is not a student in our school I’m guessing he must be
older than 18. Apparently there used to be a law that once women were married,
they could no longer attend public school, but even now that the law has been
changed, many girls still don’t go to school once they get married. I’m not
sure what this girl will do, but the teachers were quite upset all day that she
could have run off and done something so stupid.

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About Me

A girl on a quest to conquer the world. Mostly living in Korea, but often found in other places, too. Follow my adventures and feel free to ask questions and make comments! smileyjkl (at) hotmail (dot) com